OpenRCT2

Table of Contents

Plans

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OpenRCT2 has roughly three layers when dealing with rides.

A “track drawer” is code that draws a track style. This track style is sometimes shared.
RTDs (Ride Type Descriptors) are the most visible to the user. These are the types listed in the New Ride dialog, in the cheat dropdown where you can change the ride type, and in the left column of the ride vehicles in the Object Selection.
Vehicle types consist of trains for tracked rides, and reskins of flat rides. Examples include the Double Decker Carrousel or the Corkscrew Trains. Preview images are also located here.

The amount of overlap sometimes makes it hard to distinguish the three. A complicating factor is that one track drawer may be used by multiple RTDs. The converse is also true: some RTDs have different multiple different track styles that the player can choose between.

Examples:

The RTDs for the Twister, Vertical Drop and Flying roller coasters use the same track drawer, just with different supports.
The RTD for the Water Coaster uses both the Junior Roller Coaster track drawer and the Splash Boats track drawer.
The RTD for the dinghy slide uses two track drawers, one for regular track and one for covered track.

Put shortly:

The track drawers draws the track
The RTD contains the metadata
The vehicle type supplies the vehicle images and vehicle-specific behaviour

Plans

Currently, the split between RTDs and track drawers is not complete. Planned work:

The support type should not be hardcoded in the track drawer, but passed in.
Track tile elements should save the track drawer and support type they are drawn as, as well as a flag to indicate the track is "covered".
The "covered" flag should be carried over in the vehicle state.
The duplicated "covered" pieces should be normalised.
RTD currently specify a track drawer per track style. This specification should be expanded to include support type, icon and tooltip for the construction window, and boolean to indicate it’s covered track (as opposed to just track with an alternative style, like 2/3/4-rail "lattice").